


Starting Over

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 02:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12666573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: It was supposed to be easier back at home, ensconced with her family again.





	Starting Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [incandescent (lmeden)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/gifts).



It was supposed to be easier back at home, ensconced with her family again. Mulan had brought honor to her family despite the fact that she had disobeyed everything she had ever been taught since she was a child. Well, almost everything. She honored her parents with all that she was, even if that respect seemed absent. It was for them that she had run away to join the army, that she had run headlong into a world she wasn't destined to be part of.

And she had _won._

Mulan knew she was supposed to wear the gilded robes and slippers, paint her face pale and apply the jewels and pins that would hold her in place. She was supposed to take mincing steps, smile coquettishly behind a fan, flutter her lashes and pretend that the country men in the surrounding villages were clever and strong. Her heart wasn't in it, even more than it had been after she had gone to war. Now her muscles were strong and carried the memory of swords and running, spears and riding, and she could carry her own weight in equipment if she had to. She wasn't the delicate lotus flower she was supposed to be, and it felt as though she carried a heart full of pins and thorns instead.

She waited until the late evening or the early morning hours to practice her movements, when none of the servants or neighbors could see her. Stripping a broom of its bristles, she used that as a javelin, going through all of the forms and steps and leaps. A shorter stood in as a sword, as she wasn't willing to steal her father's armor for practice with this. He would likely let her, since she had proven herself in combat, but she didn't want to even risk the smallest chance that he would deny the request.

Even the niggling piece of doubt in the back of her mind bothered her. She was brave, after all. The Hero of China. She had taken on the Huns and had even used a flimsy fan as a weapon to disarm their leader.

Remembering the feel of the adrenaline coursing through her, Mulan leapt to her feet with far too much energy and speed to be graceful in the traditionally feminine way she was taught to be. Her room felt too small and enclosed, but it was midday. There was no hiding the practice, should she try to do it. There was no excuse she could have, moving about in the dress and slippers as if she was still a member of the royal army. But her palms itched, needing the feel of a sword hilt and the weight of its blade slicing through air. She needed the press of the armor, pushing her feet down into the ground, keeping her from flying out of her skin. She had seen too much, done too much, and a quiet life of needlepoint wasn't sharp enough.

The paper fan on her dressing table was snatched up without a second thought, and she moved out from her room into the courtyard. Her mother and grandmother were about, her father in his study reading a scroll for probably the hundredth time.

Ping pressed against the inside of her skin, and Mulan had no wish to contain him. She needed to move, to feel her blood sing. A woman wasn't expected to use a sword, but she could wield the fan with all the deadly grace she had learned as Ping.

Behind the small koi pond, she had a flat enough and wide enough space fairly hidden from the main house. The wall around the property should shield her from villagers. The gossips and the matchmaker were likely just waiting for some kind of awful tidbit, the false move that would send the Imperial favor fleeing from the Fa family in horror, something to make themselves feel superior for conforming to the status quo.

Right foot forward, she sank into a crouch and held the fan in front of her as if it was a sword with a honed edge. Thrust, parry, deflect. Kick up, back, out. Her eyes were fixed on an invisible enemy, and she thought back to the palace fight. Immediately she thought of black and copper eyes, and the adrenaline spiked again. Mulan moved faster, harder, whipping the fan down and up, left and right. She was fighting in the snow, at the Imperial palace, in training. Her enemy was everyone and no one, the world spiraling out of control in the heat of an imaginary battle. She had to win. She had to prove them wrong.

Stopping abruptly, Mulan nearly fell to her knees near the pond. It would have ruined her gown if she had done so, and her mother and grandmother would never let her hear the end of it. The Imperial favor didn't extend to unlimited lines of credit, so the fancier gowns were still few and precious to the family. Her grandmother still wanted her to marry, still wanted to find a husband and have children. Mulan didn't necessarily want to refuse that future, but it wasn't all she was anymore. She had been able to move freely and speak her mind, and had been rewarded for it as men were. Slinking back into the shadows wasn't her style.

She opened the fan, looking at the golden chrysanthemums decorating the white paper. It was a delicate and ornamental thing, with wooden spokes that could be easily broken. She was supposed to be just like it, serving a single purpose and discarded when no longer needed.

Mulan snapped the fan shut and twisted it within her hands. Keeping it clenched in her fist, she moved through the training exercises, movements sharp and controlled. She was a soldier hiding beneath silk skirts. She was a hidden weapon, the sliver of sharp steel tucked inside a boot, and there was really no point in pretending to be anything other than what she was. Her reflection would never change, never show her another face.

The fan snapped and unfurled with a swift flick of her wrist, chrysanthemums flashing in her peripheral vision. This was the kind of dance she knew, deadly and sure, her hair a dark curtain that could hide the direction of her eyes, camouflage the direction of her blow. 

_Yes._ Her footing was solid now, hitting the soft ground hard and deep, anchoring herself into the earth of her home. She would die to protect this land and its inhabitants, just as she almost had already. Not for a medal or a reward, but for honor and duty and the rightness of it, that she could do this task when another could not. Another flick of her wrist and the fan snapped shut, closed inside of her fist. As narrow as it was, she held it as if it was the sword she had trained with in the army.

It clicked.

Why hadn't she seen it before? It wasn't heavy like a sword, but she had taken a bamboo fan and yanked a sword out of an opponent's hand. She had used others' misperceptions of her and the apparent status to outwit them.

She wasn't just a pretty face and the Fa family's brood mare. She wasn't the delicate blossom on the fan, rising out of the mud to be a pure and chaste object of beauty. Mulan could accept its nobility and elegance, could accept the strength and long life.

Snapping the fan back open, she contemplated the chrysanthemum, fanning the air in front of her as she continued to hold it like a sword. This was a tool, nothing more. It had no other meaning than what she gave it, no other purpose than what she could use it for. This didn't have to be a symbol of everything everyone else wanted that she could never live up to. She had already saved face for the Fa family, and her ancestors could rest easily. Whatever the shape of her future, she could face it with her closed fist. Her eyes were aware and hidden, and her abilities not often spoken of but still present.

"I can do this," she said, focusing on her fist and stance. Her voice was strong and solid, Ping's confidence infused with her own milder tones.

This was _her_ voice. _Her_ stance.

Ping wasn't some separate creature she invented, a caricature of a boy as she played at being a man. No, this was all her. This was who Mulan was meant to be.

She laughed, a loud and bubbling sound in the quiet of the garden, and then moved through the rest of the swordplay exercises with the fan. It didn't matter if there was mud on her slippers, if the hem of the exquisite silk dress caught the edges of dirt and grass. The dress could be cleaned, the slippers washed. It was only dirt, after all. Even blood could be washed away if you scrubbed hard enough, and she knew how to do that.

Her laughter drew her mother from one of her errands. "Mulan?"

"Yes, Mother?" she called, pausing mid-stance.

"Come to the center of the garden," her mother called. "More space to practice. I do hope you're not wearing your best dress for this."

That was almost shocking enough that Mulan nearly dropped her fan. "No, Mother. It's my regular day dress."

She walked to the center of the garden, the heart of the household, and saw her mother standing tall and with a soft smile on her face. "There's my warrior daughter," she said, a fond note in her voice that Mulan never recalled hearing when she struggled at the traditional role set for her.

"Do you want to learn?" Mulan asked impulsively. She almost wanted to take the words back as soon as she said them, but her mother's expression actually brightened. It had been what she had hoped for when she tried so hard at learning instruments and embroidery, failing spectacularly with every attempt.

"Show me how you saved our family and all of China," her mother said, the smile growing wider. "I don't know if I have that talent, but we'll see."

Moving slowly, Mulan went through the exercises with the fan in hand, grinning with joy.

The End


End file.
